Artifact Power from Quests and Treasures Scales with Knowledge

Artifact Power from quests and treasures was confirmed to scale with Artifact Knowledge today. There was a concern that one-time AP rewards with lots of power would be something players would delay turning in until they had a lot of Artifact Knowledge to scale up. On the other hand, if the quest and treasure items did not scale up, it wouldn't feel good to return to old content to get a minuscule reward.\r\rIn addition to scaling Artifact Power items up, they also now grant a much smaller base amount of power. These items have been updated on Wowhead, such as Talisman de Marchevallon.\r\rLearn more about Knowledge and bonuses in the Artifact Weapon Guide.\r\rThe fact that Artifact Power rewards from quests and treasures now scale with Knowledge is not a bug. \r\rWe started off the design of the system thinking along the exact same lines as many of the posters in this thread: We figured that we should make sure that one-time AP rewards did not scale, or else the "right" answer might be to delay completing key quests or collecting any treasures until you had higher Knowledge. And that didn't sound like much fun.\r\rSo we spent the first half of beta with all repeatable AP sources (world quests, item drops, missions, etc.) scaling, and all story quests and treasures flat. We added multipliers to things like Suramar or Order Campaign quests that tried to incorporate a likely expected Knowledge level at the point where players would get to that content. So, for example, finishing the third chapter of the Suramar campaign awarded a flat 10k Artifact Power, since by that point we expected players to likely have a ~14x multiplier from being around Knowledge Level 12, and we wanted to make sure that the reward still felt meaningful to that player.\r\rBut as we were actually playtesting extensively and getting into endgame ourselves and going through the Artifact Power and Knowledge progressions, we realized two things:\r\r\r Artifact Power isn't a limited resource. There's always more available. There are world quests popping up every few hours, dungeons that can be repeatedly run, and so forth. And regardless of what we did with one-time sources, the vast majority of a player's AP over the course of the expansion would come from repeatable sources.\r Even trying to account for an expected "par" Knowledge level, any time you came across a non-scaling reward that was aimed at someone with a lower Knowledge level, it felt pretty bad. Stumbling across a zone side-quest you'd missed and getting 100 AP from it when you needed 70k for your next trait felt like a waste of time. Opening a treasure to get 25 AP when you needed 300k for your next trait felt insulting. The system we'd set up actually encouraged trying to front-load all your AP while it still mattered (e.g. doing a full world tour to collect every treasure possible while still at Knowledge Level 1, since if you waited they'd no longer be worth the time relative to other activities).\r\r\rSo we started changing it. The first step was making treasures and level-up quests scale. That helped, but we still found that someone who delayed doing much in Suramar beyond the initial Friendly unlock, and instead focused on other content (dungeons, world quests, etc.), found all the rewards in the zone incredibly underwhelming once they got around to doing those quests. So just over a month ago, we also converted those rewards to be scaling sources.\r\rNow, we haven't had a new client build since then, so community sites and datamining likely still show the values of the old items. That Suramar Chapter 3 capstone reward mentioned above is not a 10k AP item that gets multiplied by Artifact Power - that'd be pretty crazy. It's now just a 750 AP base item, which will give around 10k AP when you get there if you've been keeping up with your Knowledge.\r\rIt's not necessarily intuitive, since at first glance it seems like an obvious flaw in our system that if you wait until Knowledge Level 20 (a month and a half longer) to complete that quest, it'd give over 70k AP instead of 10k. Aren't you "wasting" 60k AP if you don't do that? The key here is that everything is relative. That Suramar quest capstone reward is equal to ~5 world quests. It'll be equal to 5 world quests if you do it ASAP; it'll be equal to 5 world quests if you do it two months later. And it'll contribute roughly the same amount towards whatever trait you're working on at the time.\r\rFinally, it's also worth noting that the biggest one-time sources of AP are the Order Hall campaign, and the Suramar campaign. From a pure min-max perspective (probably the mindset most associated with the competitive raider), you really don't want to delay turning in either of those. The former leads to unlocking your third Artifact relic slot; the latter unlocks additional repeatable sources of AP (new world quests) and eventually access to the two Mythic dungeons, for an extra two Mythic clears each week. \r\r tl;dr: Just get Artifact Power when you find it, as you find it. Enjoy the rewards and the immediate benefit, and you aren't hurting yourself in the long run

Commentaires

Commentaire de Xexji

pretty cool. Hopefully this should be a system where the most intuitive solution is the one that's 'correct'

Commentaire de Mightylorddk

on 2016-08-24T09:00:07-05:00

Great change, thanks Blizzard for figuring this out before the game went live

Commentaire de harulez

on 2016-08-24T09:12:48-05:00

Yeah Blizzard is doing a great job with legion so far, if they keep this work up it will be a great expansion.

Commentaire de Random0223

on 2016-08-24T09:15:03-05:00

I'm glad they're scaling it... but it was still a huge grind to get enough AP, end game, to get the last traits active on the weapons. This will help tons!

Commentaire de TheMostUnfunny

on 2016-08-24T09:55:42-05:00

ty Blizz for everything! I know you crap and flak from all sides but we appreciate the info as well as the game :)

Commentaire de Eliteblood

on 2016-08-24T09:57:09-05:00

I should probably know this but how do you increase the knowledge scale?

Commentaire de Kellei

on 2016-08-24T10:24:14-05:00

I should probably know this but how do you increase the knowledge scale?\r\rWork order in your class order hall, costs 500 resources and takes a few days to complete.

Commentaire de Joejr82

on 2016-08-24T10:35:48-05:00

I should probably know this but how do you increase the knowledge scale?

Work orders in your Order Hall for 500 resources, time for them to complete varies some based if you keep up on it or not. But you can't start them till 110 iirc.

This change makes Focusing on Profession quests more appealing as well as dungeon grinding more for lvl'ing.

Commentaire de Kadael

on 2016-08-24T10:49:09-05:00

This wasn't live when I was last in Beta, but do treasures scale before you go and find them, or will they scale with them in your bags\/bank (as you level\/update AP rate)

Commentaire de Altorax

on 2016-08-24T11:30:57-05:00

@Kadael\rOnly as you find them. They won't scale in your bag\/banks iirc.

Commentaire de wonkey

on 2016-08-24T11:33:17-05:00

You Get AP when you Loot the item, i cannot see it scaling once looted. think of it like a quest reward. You complete a quest at 101 and the item is ilvl 730, when you hit 102 it does not change ilvl.

But,as they said, most AP will come from repeatable sources. Saving treasures or grinding dungeons will actually hinder your progress rather than help just because you saved a few AP. Doing so would put you at level 110, with a low powered artifact, minimal progress on the order hall campaign etc.

Commentaire de Razkala

on 2016-08-24T11:50:16-05:00

So what does this mean? We should stack them and save them up?

Commentaire de jjanchan

on 2016-08-24T11:52:14-05:00

No sources of AP that are in your inventory will ever change. This was very deliberate on Blizzard's part, to ensure people didn't hoard items to try and level artifact knowledge first.

Rather, they will now be worth more based on your Artifact Knowledge level when they are LOOTED.

Commentaire de Anatos

on 2016-08-24T12:20:44-05:00

No sources of AP that are in your inventory will ever change. This was very deliberate on Blizzard's part, to ensure people didn't hoard items to try and level artifact knowledge first.\r\rRather, they will now be worth more based on your Artifact Knowledge level when they are LOOTED.\r\rExactly. No use keeping them, only the ones you find after you've researched the AK will get the bonus. Just use them as you find them.

Commentaire de uabtodds

on 2016-08-24T12:33:04-05:00

Would this change mean that it would be beneficial to grind the levels from 100-110 (perhaps even taking advantage of draenor bonus objectives\/treasures, etc.) doing as little of the leveling zone quests as possible, get to 110, unlock artifact knowledge, then go back and do the zones and collect the accelerated AP?\rOr is Artifact Knowledge gated behind something OTHER than strictly being level 110?

Commentaire de Soeroah

on 2016-08-24T12:56:30-05:00

Would this change mean that it would be beneficial to grind the levels from 100-110 (perhaps even taking advantage of draenor bonus objectives\/treasures, etc.) doing as little of the leveling zone quests as possible, get to 110, unlock artifact knowledge, then go back and do the zones and collect the accelerated AP?Or is Artifact Knowledge gated behind something OTHER than strictly being level 110?

AK is only gated by level, but there's little point trying to do it that way. World Quests are much faster and reward AP more reliably and frequently, as do dungeons and raids.

If you want, sure, save all the stuff until you max out your AK, but it's less efficient and means underlevelling your Artifact for months.

Commentaire de LyssaWoW

on 2016-08-24T13:28:38-05:00

Would this change mean that it would be beneficial to grind the levels from 100-110 (perhaps even taking advantage of draenor bonus objectives\/treasures, etc.) doing as little of the leveling zone quests as possible, get to 110, unlock artifact knowledge, then go back and do the zones and collect the accelerated AP?\rOr is Artifact Knowledge gated behind something OTHER than strictly being level 110?\r\rI think the point of this change was to stop that from being the "optimal" way to get Artifact Power. The way it is now with the change, you could do that if you really wanted to, but you would bore yourself stupid just waiting for a work order to finish and not doing anything else in the game. If you do it the way Blizzard is intending, and because of the way artifact trait unlock points scales (you need tiny amounts for your first traits, then it increases after a few, then it goes to huge levels for the last part of the artifact weapon), once you start unlocking Artifact Knowledge, that's when you will need the boost to AP amounts, because the cost per trait increases.

Commentaire de mindaikaX

on 2016-08-24T13:50:48-05:00

It sounds like the devs are saying that we should play the game and enjoy it, instead of trying to abuse the underlying mechanics to give us a tiny edge that isn't relevant to any but a couple dozen of the millions of people playing the game.

Commentaire de Hathegkla

on 2016-08-24T14:41:47-05:00

lol 30 AP when you need 300k to unlock a trait.. at least they figured out that it was way absurd..